Greetings!
Infrastructure seems the big buzzword these days. President Biden touched down in Cleveland on Thursday to to tout the benefits of the massive and long overdue Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill that he was able to get through Congress. His talk at the Lorain Shipyards was all about roads and bridges and waterways and water pipes. He no doubt wished that he could also have talked about parallel kinds of infrastructure that relate to human development: child care and broadband, a social safety net, climate change. Those items will have to await a more enlightened Congress, or in the case of climate change, a more desperate one.
Two stories we publish today also have to do with the interrelatedness of our built environment and our socio-cultural space and development. The expansion plans of the Hitchcock Center for Women underscore the importance of spaces created to enhance the development and or repair of the human spirit. The Hitchcock Center is helping to rejuvenate women and families who would have been urban detritus at the time their current facility was built.
And in a bit of irony, the luxurious and exclusive Moreland Courts were also built in that same 1920s decade. Built for the uber-wealthy, they are still going strong. They factor in today's story about Shaker Square as a reminder of the challenges of community. How do we reconcile the USA as a land of plenty and deal with some of the socioeconomic costs of this capitalist society? Visiting the Shaker Square CVS drugstore in the morning shadow of Moreland Courts this past week, I noticed that ordinary bath soap is under lock and key on the display aisles. It's a consequence, a clerk told me with resignation in her voice, to the massive shoplifting problem the area is experiencing.
How depressing is that! People are stealing so they can wash themselves. And this is occurring in the shadow of opulence!
It's another reminder of the struggles of our urban core, underlined by the challenges of where our teeming masses coexist and often collide: Shaker Square, the West Side Market, Tower City.
Today's Hitchcock Center was built as a monastery in the 1920s.
Moreland Courts, built up the hill as an exclusionary redoubt of near-palatial residences in the 1920s
Where City Hall supports the placement of cranes in the next few years — Mayor Bibb has promised we'll see some in long-neglected areas of the city like Kinsman — we'll all do well to remember that our social service systems have similar if not greater investment needs.
Speaking of remembering, don't forget: if it's Sunday, there are superb political cartoons waiting for you!
As always, stay safe and thanks for reading The Real Deal Press!
R. T. Andrews
• • •• • •
